Listen up, little ones
Listen for the words prayers, cries, tears.
Reading
Hebrews 5:1-10—Prayers with Loud Cries and Tears
Optional Reading
Psalm 6:6–7
Keys for kids
- Jesus wept.
- Jesus also prayed.
- We can mix tears with our prayers too.
Questions
- When did Jesus weep in His earthly life?
- When did Jesus pray in His earthly life?
- Why do we need to pray along with our tears?
Notes
(See Saturday for authors.)
“Jesus wept” (Jn 11:35) is a well-known, short, glimpse into the tears of Jesus. Ash notes that we wonder at Jesus’s tears. Psalm 6 gives us a window into the grief of Jesus’s spirit as the shadow of our sin falls on his sinless soul. Psalm 6:6–7 fills out the tears of Hebrews 5:7. Now we know that when Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), those tears were but the visible few from an ocean of weeping, night by night on earth. As the Son of God faces the hostility of a sinful world whom he has been sent to save, he weeps and weeps and weeps. Luther comments that “such was the ardor of [the Lord’s] spirit, that if He had had so many tears in His head that they would have been enough to wash His bed, He would surely have poured them out.”
If our Lord mixed tears with His prayers, surely we can too! And we likely have. The alternative is often just tears, or tears and anger, or tears and depression. Instead, like Jesus, we can weep and pray. God, who Jesus knew was able to save Him from death, can save us from, or through, the hard circumstances that lead us to pray with tears.
Jesus wept. You can weep too. But don’t forget, Jesus also prayed. And you must pray too.
Swedish Method questions
Praise
Psalm 6a, 65c
Prayer
- Ask, with cries and tears if you need to, God to work.
- Pray for change in you from last Lord’s Day’s sermons.
- Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.